Building Daily Meals Around Protein and Plants

Let's talk a little bit about, I think, my diet. People are wanting to know my macronutrient breakdown. And I say again, it's less about macronutrient breakdown. I do try to hit at the very least 1.2 g per kilogram body weight of protein a day. I typically am more like 1.4, or 1.3 to 1.4 g, is what I'm getting. But I also try to get a lot of vegetables, fiber, and fruit.

So, my typical day, I have a variety of foods that I cycle between. For my first meal, I'll do a whole-fat yogurt, Greek yogurt. Actually, I like the European-style yogurt. It's a little bit runnier. And I have a cup of blueberries in there, almond slices, and it's a big bowl. So, I'll eat that sometimes around 11:00 a.m.

Sometimes I can do my workout fasted; other times I can't. It depends on the day. I think it all has to do with when I eat dinner and how big my dinner was and all that. But on days where I wake up and I'm like, "I have to get something before my workout," I have these homemade fiber muffins that are made with psyllium husk, whey protein, and blueberries. And I have one of those before my workout, and it's amazing. It really helps me get through my workout. So, these days I've been doing more of the muffins before my workout. I've been finding that I need a little something before my workout. And then I'll have the whole-fat yogurt with the blueberries and some almond slices.

And then if I don't have the blueberry yogurt, then I sometimes instead will have a homemade turkey burger with some raw kale and pumpkin seeds, a little bit of olive oil, and a little bit of balsamic vinegar, and my microplastic-free salt on it. And then sometimes I'll also either do homemade chicken soup as well for my first meal. And so that's kind of like I rotate between those.

Now, sometimes I'll have to have an extra turkey burger, or sometimes I'll do a little bit of protein with a little salad as an afternoon snack. But for my dinner, I'll rotate between protein choices. So, I'll do wild Alaskan salmon, or I'll do some homemade Moroccan chicken, or I'll do a filet mignon, or I'll do a vegetable and chicken stir-fry. So, it's usually either salmon, chicken, or red meat. I usually do red meat probably once or twice a week.

And then I'll have that with either sautéed greens. These days I do these collard greens with a little bit of onion and garlic, olive oil, and a little bit of vinegar. Or I'll have a kale salad, and my kale salad, I'll do the pumpkin seeds and then carrots sliced—sorry, shredded carrots—and then I'll make a homemade avocado dressing with avocado. I'll press garlic, I'll add a little bit of Bragg's apple cider vinegar and mix that around, a little tiny, tiny bit of olive oil, and I mix it around and add that as a dressing. And that also is great because it has the avocado, which increases the bioavailability of the lutein and zeaxanthin and beta-carotene and all the carotenoids in the salad by like fourfold. So, I like that as well.

So that is really, I would say, these days what I'm—I haven't been doing as many smoothies, but I do think it's mostly because I've been on this yogurt kick and getting my blueberries from the yogurt.

And there was a related question about where I get my groceries, my meats, my seafood. So, typically I shop at an organic store called Jimbo's. Sometimes I'll get some stuff from a farmers market, but I like the butcher there. I used to get my meat from US Wellness Meats. That's another great source, particularly when I was doing a lot of organ meat combos and stuff like that. I don't really do that as much these days. But I do like them if you're looking for a good source of meat. Let's say you don't have any local store that's really good. They're a great one. The problem is they ship it frozen and all that. So, you don't get it fresh.

So, let's go back and look at some of these nutrition questions in the live chat. The brand of microplastic-free salt I use is called Vera Salt.

Karen's asking, given what I know about food, how do I eat out? It depends. If I'm in my hometown, there's a few restaurants that are organic. They're grass-fed. They don't use seed oils, and I love those places. So, I try to eat clean. But when I'm traveling or on vacation, and even sometimes when I'm in my hometown, there's sometimes I just eat out and I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to still eat healthier dishes. I'm not going to go for some crazy unhealthy dish." But I think I just give myself some grace to not worry about it. I think if you're more than 80% of the time eating healthy, that it's okay. And that's kind of like I just don't obsess about it because otherwise you can just drive yourself insane.